This brilliant (albeit sacrilegious) project comes to us from Robert Kaye and Pierre Michael of Party Robotics. I’ll let them give you the background on it:

Our longhaired friend Greg was planning a Jesus-themed birthday party, and people joked about a cool possible prop: a machine that would seemingly convert water to wine. “Hey!” we thought. “We can do that!”

So we got to work, while the others just dreamed. A week before the party, we obtained a ceramic-crock water dispenser, sprinkler valves, aquarium pumps, and assorted PVC fittings. We made a glorious mess nearly every time we tried to create the illusion, because we would inadvertently start a siphon that we couldn’t stop.

The team eventually got their first version working for the party, but the illusion wasn’t perfectly seamless. “The wine container sat on a shelf behind the cooler while the guts of the system sat on the floor—all of it draped with sheets, making it obvious that some shenanigans were taking place,” said Pierre. They endeavored to improve the Water-to-Wine Cooler and eventually came up with a version they were happy with, demonstrated in the video below:

If you’re curious how they pulled off this illusion, check out the full step-by-step tutorial on Make: Projects or keep an eye out for MAKE Volume 34, where the Water-to-Wine Cooler project will be excerpted.

MAKE Volume 34: Join the robot uprising! As MAKE's Volume 34 makes clear, there’s never been a better time to delve into robotics, whether you’re a tinkerer or a more serious explorer. With the powerful tools and expertise now available, the next great leap in robot evolution is just as likely to come from your garage as a research lab. The current issue of MAKE will get you started. Explore robot prototyping systems, ride along with the inventors of the OpenROV submersible, and learn how you can 3D-print your own cutting-edge humanoid robot for half the price. Plus, build a coffee-can Arduino robot, a lip balm linear actuator, a smartphone servo controller, and much more

Matt Richardson is a San Francisco-based creative technologist and Contributing Editor at MAKE. He’s the co-author of Getting Started with Raspberry Pi and the author of Getting Started with BeagleBone.